"Out of buffers" error with PFS3AIO

[Amiga1992]

I was trying to do a file operation with a lot of items (copying WHDLoad game installs from my WinUAE folder to my real Amiga CF) and I got an "Out of buffers" error from PFS3AIO. It then kept saying stuff and would write protect the drive and not let it be changed.

The partition is less than 1.8GB and I set buffers at 200. What am I doing wrong?
I seem to be getting random system lockups when copying these files over.

[Toni Wilen]

I don't know PFS3 internals that much but it seems allocated buffers can't be freed and re-used if they are still in use (contains file header blocks and file is open and so on)

How do you copy them? Sounds like bad copy algorithm (opens all files in a directory first and then copy them or something like that) or it leaks file handles or locks.

[Amiga1992]

You are right, this happened when using DirWork, but not when copying from Shell.
So I blame DirWork for that. It does seem like it tried to buffer the names of thousands of files at once, when I did it folder by folder it worked too.

I'm still getting random lockups when copying to the disk even from shell, but can't really reproduce them so I won't post about it until I find a pattern.

Thanks!

[jaesonk]

Blame dirwork but I experienced this recently with dopus too. I was copying a few thousand JPG files for use with my VLM & MovieShop. The AmigaDOS partitions are PFS3 (so much faster than FFS). I ended up copying in smaller batches. I could have tried the shell if it were just a straight copy but I needed to rename them too, MovieShop requires a specific naming convention.

I occasionally run PFS Doctor on the PFS3 partitions. They usually get a clean bill of health but once in a while it finds and corrects something.

[utri007]

This same thing happened to me, I didn't boot up to OS. Didn't do anything special, just rebooted and it was there.

So, I reformated OS partition FFS. FFS has it problems, but all problems are solvable. Or at least I know how to solv them.

[jaesonk]

I haven't had enough problems with PFS3 to make me consider going back to FFS. The advantages & benefits of PFS3 have far outweighed any problems. When I first got PFS3, I installed on a single partition for testing. After a few months, I did another, then another.

I keep most partitions in the 700MB range for convenient back-ups on CDRWs. I also like to make a back-up boot partition. You could run PFS3 on a primary boot partition and FFS on the back-up.

[midwan]

I've experienced this problem once under PFSAio also, but after I added some more buffers to the device during the Startup-sequence it went away forever.

It only occurred once during copying a very large amount of files over (i.e. the whole partition's contents).

[spudje]

Can you show me that Startup-sequence line for a n00b like me

Thanks!

[midwan]

All you need to do is add a line (or edit the existing one, if it's there) like so:

C:AddBuffers >NIL: DH0: 8192

where DH0: is your device name and 8192 is the amount of buffers you want to add. Granted, 8192 is probably an overkill but I had the RAM to spare (I have 128MB installed). The default value on the Device itself from HDToolbox was 80 buffers, to give you some perspective. You can try experimenting with smaller values and increase if you have a problem.

Hope that helps.

[idrougge]

I just experienced a "PFS3: out of buffers" requester and the machine froze.

I was using DirOpus, but not for big file operations, just copying one file at a time and double clicking readmes.

[Sinphaltimus]

Just happened to me doing very large file operations in DirOpus 4. Glad this topic exists. Now picking up where the emulated amiga froze and continuing in smaller chunks. (copy files from real amiga hd to PC)